Network cooperation between a cellular network and a wireless local area network (WLAN) is a current research focus. In a scenario of cooperative transmission between the cellular network and the WLAN, on the one hand, a WLAN service that has been initiated in the WLAN may be transmitted in the WLAN; on the other hand, user equipment (English: user equipment, UE for short) served by the cellular network may offload some or all services initiated in the cellular network to the WLAN, so as to make full use of the WLAN to improve a throughput.
In the foregoing scenario, transmission in the WLAN is mainly based on a carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) contention mechanism. That is, multiple nodes including UE and a WLAN access point (AP) apply for a resource in a contention manner. If multiple WLAN APs send data at the same time, a conflict is to be caused, thereby resulting in a waste of resources. When there are many WLAN APs, a probability of such a conflict is greatly increased, thereby resulting in a severe decrease of system communication performance.